


the air is warm, my heart is cold

by updatepls



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, ouch ouch ouch closely followed by slay slay slay hot slay, that's the summary for this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 07:24:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3241253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/updatepls/pseuds/updatepls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rachel Duncan kills people, what more do you need? Men. Rachel murders two of them. Ok if you genuinely need more: </p><p>  <em>If a monster kills another monster does it still count as monstrous? Rachel thinks not. And if it does, she doesn't care one bit.<em></em></em></p>
            </blockquote>





	the air is warm, my heart is cold

**Author's Note:**

> Okay can we all just take every single line of this fic with a pinch of salt I have literally no idea what possessed me in any way shape or form and I am equal parts proud and ashamed of this story. 
> 
> Obligatory listening: Worthy - Jacob Banks

It's only been a week. It's only been a week and Ethan is sick. Prostate cancer, or so he tells Rachel.

A rotting of the reproductive organs. Rachel feels it like a knife between her ribs, twisting ninety degrees one way and then the other, scraping against bone and leaving the shavings to pollute her blood stream. Working until it makes a full three-sixty; until the brittle rods crack and the blade jerks clean into her heart.

Rachel just grabs it by the hilt and slides it clean _out_.

"Tea?" Rachel raises her eyebrows a fraction, her smile all business pleasantry.

Ethan leans forward instantly and places a weathered hand over both of Rachel's where they lie locked in her lap. It encompasses their entirety. She glances at their overlapping fingers; gives a tight smile; re-meets her father's eyes and sets her gaze like black ice: like war like winning like predator.

"My dear. I don't think you quite understand,"

(she understands)

"just how little time we have...",

(she understands)

"... _together._ "

(She understands.)

By now, Rachel can feel the blood draining from her face, from her extremities. Can feel her breathing shallow and her eyes begin to skit over the room against her permission. She swallows the rising lump in her throat and thinks of nothing. Gives away _nothing._

"I can assure, Dyad will take good care of you."

Ethan's face is a scramble of pain and disbelief as Rachel extricates herself elegantly, a lioness before a wounded bison.

Rachel drops a single sugar cube into Ethan's teacup; hears it rattle briefly before settling.

She forgoes a lump in her own, and the gesture quells her breathing—breaks the wings of the butterflies in her stomach—because each time Rachel Duncan is faced with a decision, she chooses perfection. Perfect _thighs,_ in this instance, perhaps... but what she is choosing matters not. Perfect beauty, perfect justice; perfect suits, perfect china. Rachel Duncan is _led_ no where. Not in the end at least.

"Don't you remember how much we loved you, Rachel?" A pause. "Rachel _May_."

Rachel's heart leaps into her throat and her left knee gives way, bumping into the side of the counter just a few inches in front.

 _May_. Her middle name, her mother's maiden name, the name they had tagged onto the end of _Rachel_  when she was a kid. She despises it, had had it legally removed from her birth certificate at the age of eighteen.

Rachel _Duncan_ grips the counter; silver nails atop whited-out flesh with the pressure of it. The moisture in her eyes brims over and a single tear tracks the border of her nose, conveniently pooling at the corner of her mouth where she is able to lick her lips and pretend like it never existed; to reabsorb all that she had lost.

Rachel clears her throat, and chooses perfection.

Grasping the tray with steady hands, Rachel turns and smiles widely enough to flash her canines.

"I don't remember at all."

 

 

***

 

 

This time Ethan Duncan does not die without his daughter's permission—without her consent. Is not snatched away from her by the searing flames of an explosion, the cold fingers of disease.

Instead, Rachel reaches down, bends at the knees, and pulls out the cord with her own cold fingers.

It has been thirty-seven days and Ethan Duncan lies on his deathbed.

Rachel watches the green line flatten, smoothen, watches as every beat sinks into one endless plateau. Feels the pieces of her heart scatter and reunite all at once. She hates him; she hates herself. She loves him, _but she loves herself more._

When Daniel had been murdered, she had closed his eyes; had given him dignity. For, while not to her, he had been a loyal man.

She leaves Ethan's open, lets him gaze at the ceiling blankly. Lets him soil the bedsheets, lets him die at the hands of his own creation.

If a monster kills another monster does it still count as monstrous? Rachel thinks not. And if it does, she doesn't care one bit.

It is not a fanciful occasion, filled with tears and stomach flutters and the fierce pump of adrenaline. Rachel simply walks from the room. Walks from the room just in time to mingle with the other bodies in the corridor; to look as though she had began her journey from further up the hallway as nurses rush past her, medical jargon hot on their tongues.

Rachel catches the gaze of a particularly enthusiastic, young male nurse and momentarily he stops talking. Stops spewing science like it were a miracle happening before his very eyes, not a veritable tragedy.

Rachel supposes that Ethan's face had held a similar expression when he'd first designed the clones' sequences - making monsters out of labs, and labs out of monsters.

Rachel imagines wrapping her hands around his neck. Wants her thumbs pressed neatly over young-Ethan's carotids, starving his monstrous brain.

He swallows visibly under her candid, callous stare and by now, Rachel envisions him blue in the face, clutching at her lapels, eyes rolling back in his head. Her cheeks flush with the thrill of it and he, violently mistaken, raises an eyebrow. Rachel just looks him up and down pityingly, watches his youthful grandiosity clatter to the vomit-coloured linoleum floor. Watches as he crudely prods the inside of his cheek with his tongue, squinting at her, aggressive; reads profanity. Can practically hear the words:  _Suck my dick_.

She files it, and the overwhelming stench of cigarette smoke shrouding him, away for later.

They brush past one another and Rachel exits the ward, stately as ever.

(Slipping out merely saves face, nothing more. If she is caught on the hospital's security, Dyad will win the lawsuit, further lives lost in the process, no doubt. She decides quickly that it will be Ethan's fault.)

The air outside is warm, and Rachel understands herself to be at last her own, and her own only.

And suddenly: Rachel _May_ wouldn't. But Rachel Duncan might.

She sets her gaze— _like war like winning like predator—_ and waits to one side of the exit, reaching down inside her dress and settling each breast higher in her bra; dips into her bag and glides a fresh coat of lipstick over the existing one. Ethan is a lost cause, and Rachel knows she won't have to wait long.

Not ten minutes pass and he is standing next to her, lighting up on an emergency cigarette break, as predicted. At first he doesn't even notice Rachel standing there, not until she says, "Which is yours?" and nods minutely at the parking lot.

An orange overhead lights the immediate space outside the foyer, but otherwise it is pitch black.

"Uh," he emits the word along with a large trail of smoke, and Rachel does her best not to cough. Instead, she licks her lips and raises her eyebrows expectantly.

"Th-that one."

Ethan's nurse is a mess, and Rachel takes his cigarette from his fingers before throwing it to the ground and striding in the direction he had gestured, not bothering to check if he is following. They reach his scruffy two-door and Rachel wastes no time in pressing him up against the framework, connecting her mouth with his in a way that will distract enough from what she is doing with her dress. He tastes obnoxious; like smoke and teenage-boy and the ketchup that he probably used to dip his French fries in at lunch. Rachel tries to remember that this is serving a _purpose_.

In one fluid motion, Rachel drops her hands, hikes up her dress, and rams her knee into his groin.

Instantly he wails into her mouth and Rachel almost thinks it isn't worth it. She breaks away and loses not a second further of his incapacitated state, bringing her hands flush around his neck as he sags half against the car, half against her torso. As promised, his face adopts a delicious shade of lilac with each minute Rachel keeps her thumbs pressed under the corners of his jaw. She is surprised how easy it all is really, shoving up with her knee once again when he attempts at swiping her arms away.

She watches the life appear to trickle from his mouth in weakened breaths, watches as the lilac is replaced by sheet-white. Watches in delight. Finally his pulse ceases entirely beneath her thumbs and she sidesteps his body as he falls limply to the tarmac, a pile of limbs and mint-coloured hospital scrubs.

She leaves his eyes just the way they are. Terrified, helpless, begging.

_Good._

Rachel _May_ wouldn't, but Rachel Duncan does.

**Author's Note:**

> Suddenly, I feel worthy somehow.
> 
> I’m being seen in all of my glory.  
> The air is warm, my heart is cold,  
> And I’ll never know how it feels  
> To have a heart of gold.
> 
> The new world is calling me now. 
> 
> — Worthy, Jacob Banks


End file.
